Most popularly mispronounced words

It really annoys the crap out of me when people misprounounce "Jaguar"  It's Jag-war, not Jag-you-war or Jag-wire (That one REALLY bugs me).

In the trade, there's one that bugs the crap out of me. We often use a pulley to direct a pulling rope toward a tugging machine or to human power to pull wire. Sometimes, not having a pulley, one can use an oversized pipe over something or even a rolled piece of metal. The proper word for that is sheave. It is often mispronounced as shiv. And then, guys started to refer to pulleys as shivs.
 
My previous employer couldn't pronounce mezzanine. It was "mezzameam." And he couldn't say kiln. It was "kilm". And he owns his own company. And that's because, even though he can't speak properly, he kisses butt like nobody's business.
 

the one i love is "libary" lol. that's usually the people that have never been in one!
seriously though.. it amazes me how many native speakers mispronounce. i just shut my mouth and stick to my pronounciation and i just give my two cents when it comes to german.
last year i had a guy though who gave me a lesson on how to pronounce my name. dude, it's my name. trust me, i know how to pronounce it!

lol i almost beat a kid up in my second grade class because of my last name .. told me i was spelling it wrong. his best friend had the same name and he didnt spell it that way [:@] and.. my first name, being Virginia... well... i have gained the nickname Ginger because people messing it up.. i have been called Va-ginja, Verginger, Ginja, and... some other words i dont care to mention... mispronounced on purpose [:'(] i always hated my name and resented my mom for giving it to me lol
in high school we had a substitute teacher from another country.. she pronounced my name Vaginja and my friend hit the floor laughing and has called me that ever since [>:]

A lot of people here say "lawn motor" instead of "lawn mower." That drives me nuts. My mom also says "Zip-a-lock" instead of "Ziplock," but she speaks so quickly that it's hard to catch her saying it.
 
As far as name mispronunciations go...ugh! I swear, I have to explain my name to someone at least once every time I go out in public, especially when they see Brett's last name (which I rarely use unless I have to).  eople look at my first name and take a shot at it, but they usually get it wrong. Marlania is pronounced Mar-lan-uh. I don't know WHY my mom decided there should be a silent i in my name, but by God, it's there, and it drives me insane. I'm often called Mar-lain-uh, which is understandable, but I don't understand where people come up with things like Mar-lay-shah or Mar-lan-duh. There's no freckin' d in there!
 

haha! my husband and i named our oldest son after him, and my husband is named after HIS dad.. we only did that because my son was born only five hours from his grand dad's birthday.. just seemed like the right thing to do lol
but we dont call him either of his names on his birth cert.  his nickname is Cajah... when we say it or spell it people trip over it. people want to spell it like Cage, or they cant pronounce it.. which isnt hard to do.. we say it like Cage or Cage-uh.. its an OLD family name and in it is "MaCajah" in its complete form. He's nicknamed after my hubby's great uncle who was an inventor, test pilot in the 30's and ..well.. just did a LOT of cool things. we probably should have just saved the name for the next kid, but my husband wasnt sure he would ever have another boy lol his first two were girls and was convinced thats all he would ever have.

oh yeah.. mispronunciations of words.. my sisters had a hard time with the word Pepsi when they were little.. one called it P*ssy and the other called it Peppi lol and... Sanfransisco was a funny word for them. they always said San fran squinch squoe..
one thing i get a huge kick out of is the people that like to throw big words around but... cant pronounce OR spell them... i have seen Discombobulated pronounced as Discombooberated.... heh.. cute []

When Chris was learning Arabic, his teacher told the class that since there is no "p" sound "Pepsi" is pronounce "Bebsi" []

I have lived in the south all my life, and although at times I have a southren accent, normally I don't.  I listen to a lot of books on tape, so that is where I get my pronunciation from.  I did have a problem with library, and I go there all the time.  But it could be worse, when my dad was a little kid his dad ran an ambulance company and he couldn't pronounce ambulance, lol.

on days of the week... i worked with a girl that pronounced saturday like "Sayer -dee" ... that was annoying lol
i have an aunt that purposely tries to talk like a backwoods hick.. think Larry the cable guy.... and she was NOT raised that way.. they didnt have much growing up, but they DID have a good education.. but she purposely tries to act like a dip just to fit in with the other dips. and no i dont have a problem with southern people.. i have a problem with people that go out of their way to be ignorant. i mean, you cant help having an accent, which can colour pronunciations, and it makes life interesting to be able to tell where a person is from based on accent. but.... SOME accents and pronunciations can also colour your level of education or how much you care.. in the case of my aunt. i do my best not to say Yup, Nawmp, Aint, wudnt, and Caint... my vocab came from PBS honestly. my mom and i used to watch all those Britcoms and other British shows (All creatures great and small, Shelly, plus Watership Down, Lassie, to name a few) plus the music she listened to was mostly Irish and Scottish. for a time i thought the UK was located somewhere in the US lol but i was really young then. i also read a LOT. and seeing how some words were spelled helped in pronouncing them. i was always ahead of the class in reading and vocab.. but .. my mom's a writer.. i had to be lol
once in a while my accent slips into southern, it depends on the company. and its funny to see my husband do it. he's from NH, has lived in Kansas, Miami, England, Germany and Holland.... but... when he gets around the local population his accent becomes down and dirty country, and he doesnt even know it lol when i point it out to him he denies it.. which is kinda funny lol
and his mom... she's worse.. when their friends from Holland come to visit she starts to pick up their accent and dialect.. if you were an outsider you would swear all three of them were from Holland, not just two.

I'm often called Mar-lain-uh, which is understandable, but I don't understand where people come up with things like Mar-lay-shah or Mar-lan-duh.

 
I totally thought it was mar-lahn-ya (with the i a that would make sense!)

ORIGINAL: Xeph
I totally thought it was mar-lahn-ya (with the i a that would make sense!)

 
I don't know what's up with the i, but it's just not pronounced. At least I can see how people come up with Mar-lahn-ya, or Mar-lan-e-ah if they do say the i, but some pronounciations, like Mar-lah-duh, just doesn't make sense.

One of my sisters is a retired school teacher - taught 1st & 2nd grade.   I like several of her stories.
 
A little girl asked how to spell "fart".  My sister asked her to use it in a sentence.  "The Indians were attacking the soldiers at the fart."
 
One little boy got very upset after a film on the hazards of smoking.  He sniffled and said "My family eats tobacco for dinner".  After a couple of questions, my sister determined that his "tobacco" was red and came in a bottle.  The class got a lesson on the difference between tobacco and Tabasco.
 
My sister taught the Pledge of Allegiance very carefully to avoid a common problem.  Evidently a lot of children think their "nation" is "invisible".

A hrase that is not on the list but I frequently see and hear it used incorrectly is "in other words".  Most often it is stated as "another words". 
 
In other words, what I mean is XXXXX, as in rephrasing an idea or description that is not clear.
 
My brother always says "pacific" when he means "specific" - just one of the many things about him that drives me nuts.  College man, he is, and a mechanical engineer at that.
 

In college a friend said we were going out with Don.  I said oh who's Don?  They said, you've met Don, she's the one at the party last week.  Oh you mean D-awn, not Don.  We got into a huge fight over how it was pronounced because he blamed my NY accent for pronouncing it wrong.  I looked it up and it's D-aw-n.  As in haul.   heh... but he was from MA, so what did he know?  []  he pahks the cah in the hahvard yahd.

My grandmother, an old Okie, never once lit a fire or did laundry.  She started a "fahr" and did the "warsh."  []